Matt Moore reports that Byrne, who worked on Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, Amazing Spider-Man, Superman and many other titles back in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, is writing and drawing a new "period piece" called Cold War. Published by IDW, the series stars former MI6 agent-turned-freelancer Michael Swann. The first issue involves Swann attempting to stop a British scientist from defecting to the Soviet Union.

"He operates on a freelance basis, and occasionally his former bosses call upon him to handle something that is perhaps a bit too messy for Her Majesty's Government to be involved" with, Byrne told the Associated Press. "So he knows that when he is called upon, things have reached some dire straits. His response to this is usually very straightforward and brutal."

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Byrne shared a few more details on his forums: "Altho set in the early days of the Cold War, this is NOT going to be a history book. I am playing quite freely with the order in which things happened in the real world. And I will not be tying Swann's exploits to any specific year or sequence of years. Those with an awareness of the history of this period may spot a few landmarks -- one in most particular plays an important part as a sub-thread to my overall tale -- but no reason to start checking the History Channel in order to be able to follow what's going on in this series!"